Endland

Marro Jorghul

Description:

Marro Jorghul is a human antipaladin, formerly a paladin of the militant orders of the Episcopate. He is also the son of Draughr Jorghul and his wife Sevyrina, who act as the royal family of the mannish hold of Jarash. Marro managed to attain the position of siege engineer within the Episcopal military despite his initial lack of promise due to his noble upbringing and his physical frailty. Nevertheless, his tyrannical attitude and irritable nature generated heavy prejudice against him within the ranks and hierarchy of the Church, culminating in his eventual excommunication.

Bio:

Childhood
Marro was born to the Lord Regent Draughr Jorghul and his wife Sevyrina as their only son. Marro was born with Thanatos’s Hex, a disorder of the body from which his mother also suffered. Thanatos’s Hex was responsible for Marro’s albinism and physical frailty, along with a weakened autoimmune system that left him especially vulnerable to aetheric radiation poisoning. The hold of Jarash, which was ruled by House Jorghul, was situated in the cold, bleak darkness of the northern forests. As a child Marro was not permitted to play with other children, whom his parents deemed to be of lesser worth unbecoming of his royal blood. They were also concerned that Marro would be vulnerable to physical bullying due to his albinism, which could be especially harmful due to his weakness.

For this reason, Marro spent much of his time exploring the woodlands around the hold, whenever he was permitted to leave the castle. Here he acquired an interest in herbs and plant life, and tended to a small garden. He kept this a secret from all but his mother, however, fearing that his father would frown upon such emasculate interests. He also displayed a natural aptitude for mathematics and engineering. Within the hold’s walls, Draughr attempted to interest Marro in more practical pursuits such as fencing, swordsmanship, and archery – however, Marro’s frailty rendered these interests moot.

Recruitment and Training
Marro was recruited into the ranks of the Episcopate military during his teenage years, when Draughr Jorghul dispatched him in the hopes that spending time in the church militant would aid Marro’s maturation and physical development. During his training in the Episcopate, however, he made few, if any friends and spent most time in the monasteries. There Marro developed a reverence for one specific deity of the Episcopate’s pantheon – Hexetor, the God of Tyranny and Oppression. Marro came to the conclusion that common people were not smart enough to govern themselves and therefore required an iron grip to enforce order.

Like all soldiers of the Episcopate, he despised magi for heir employment of magic without dedicating proper reverence to the gods, and as such took enthusiastically to warfare. Nevertheless, he was still physically frail and displayed little promise as a warrior on the front lines. The Episcopate generals took not of his inclination towards mathematics and engineering and redeployed him to the episcopate’s corps of siege engineers. There Marro developed an interest in fortifications and artillery, designing siege engines and battlements from which to engage in ranged combat.
He began to carry a heavy crossbow with him as a kind of portable artillery piece, along with a heavy heater shield for defense. He later invested in a morningstar and chain for melee combat, intended for the weapon’s sheer bludgeoning power and wicked spike to compensate for his own lack of physical strength.

Meanwhile, Marro’s relationship with his parents and peers was rapidly declining. He would spend many hours in his chambers avoiding contact with others and would often refuse to interact with his fellow soldiers. He was usually irritable and spiteful, his words leveled with bitterness that concerned many of his mentors and tutors. He was nearly discharged after engaging in numerous brawls with other officers over petty insults and jibes.

The Siege of Titan’s Arm and the Failure of the Rock Atoll
The Magi and the Episcopate exist as people within the three kingdoms, and therefore they often serve in the military. Sometimes their numbers hid their allegiance to their respective faction to join the legions of soldiers of the enemy to spy on them. At the time there was a strong mannish presence in Titan Arm, a mountain range to the north of Engeror that contained within its caverns vast deposits of iron ore. The dwarven clans on the other side of the range laid claim to the mountains, and for this reason perpetual war between the men of Engeror and the dwarves was active at the time of Marro Jorghul’s service to the Episcopate. While unaccustomed to spying, Marro served as a siege engineer and fortification commander during the ensuing battles between the dwarves and the humans, coordinating tactics, defensives and offensives from his self-designed battlements.

Following a decisive mannish victory, a magus spy in the legion assassinated the Episcopate general Zahariel. It was then revealed that the majority of Engeror’s forces were comprised of Episcopate and Magus spies. A small war between the two lasted in the cave-fortresses of Titan’s Arm, deep within the Rock Atoll that the battle was later named for.
For the duration of the sluggish Titan’s Arm campaign, Marro had grown increasingly frustrated and spiteful, refusing to cooperate with his fellow soldiers and watching from the battlements. Most of his contribution took the form of artillery strikes and ranged attacks. Gradually, over the course of the months, Marro began to display strange magical phenomena. Plants would wither and die in his presence, fellow troops became sickly, and his eyes would glow with an unhealthy light. During the Battle of the Rock Atoll, Episcopate troops reported Marro taking to the field with dark magic, hurling blasts of negative energy and cackling maniacally as baleful hellfire surrounded him. He did not appear after the battle, and was presumed dead. Following the Failure of the Rock Atoll, Marro was branded as an antipaladin posthumously and excommunicated from the Episcopate.

Post-Seige
After the siege, Marro spent many months traversing the wilderness between human-habituated lands until he came across the mannish hold of Loh. There he formed a mercenary band with fellow travellers who had come to the city in the interests of profit and mutual gain. The noble ruler of Loh, Lord Gobold, hired the mercenary faction to evict a local cult that had demanded a tithe of gold, threatening an imminent attack from a dragon should the city refuse to pay its own ransom. Marro, whose unholy powers had abruptly disappeared. The mercenary group found the cult of necromancers and summarily dispatched them, revealing the dragon to be little more than an illusion of magic.

The cult had, however, kidnapped a wood elf from the local tribe of druids – Glowmellow. Marro, his bloodlust awakened, journeyed with his band into the local mines to hunt for clues as to Glowmellow’s location, and then travelled into the nearby woodlands to search for the missing elf. While he was not found, they did stumble across a band of Episcopate soldiers, who immediately pursued Marro in the hopes of formally executing him. The mercenary group struck a band with the local elves and Marro fortified their world-tree with makeshift trenches and battlements to repel the company of crusaders. The repelling was successful, but Glowmellow was still lost.

Upon returning to Loh, Marro was awakened in the night by guards and bungled onto his horse, Darkmoore, and driven into the northern tundras in the dead of night. The identities of his evictors and their goals are unclear.